today bush appointed lieutenant general douglas lute to be his new "war czar," whatever the fuck that means. i found this transcript of him on the charlie rose show last year. you'll notice that, over the course of the whole interview, he says absolutely nothing of any substance, except to cast doubt on an event that the whole rest of the world acknowledges. he's perfect for the bush administration. also, he uses "collaborate" when he means "corroborate" which is one of my biggest pet peeves. (by the way, he's talking about
this attack.)
CHARLIE ROSE: Can you tell me anything about the predator attack in Pakistan?
DOUGLAS LUTE: Charlie, I don`t have anything to say about that alleged attack.
CHARLIE ROSE: That alleged attack? This baffles me, General. The alleged attack. The world knows the attack took place.
DOUGLAS LUTE: Well, Charlie the...
CHARLIE ROSE: I mean, am I wrong about that? I mean, how could I...
DOUGLAS LUTE: I`d like to caution you...
CHARLIE ROSE: What is going on here?
DOUGLAS LUTE: Charlie...
CHARLIE ROSE: It`s just crazy to say, when the reputable people around the world are saying there was an attack. You`ve got Pakistani sources saying -- Pakistani sources saying there were some al Qaeda there and they were killed. And the Pakistani government says, "We need to look at the information." The American government says, "The alleged attack. I have nothing to say."
DOUGLAS LUTE: Charlie, I think those of us, who are suspect, about commenting on this have learned over time, in this region perhaps more than other regions around the world, that there are multiple agendas taking place here. And that the early reports...
CHARLIE ROSE: Just explain that to me. What`s a multiple agenda?
DOUGLAS LUTE: Well, what I mean is that reports are not always as reports first seem. And that reports may be sponsored, reports may be generated to serve ulterior motives and so forth. And it always has taken us sometime in this region to try to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I think that`s probably the situation we find ourselves in now.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
DOUGLAS LUTE: And that`s why it`s not worth my time.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK, fair enough. And if I tortured you, you wouldn`t tell me. But having said that, what is -- how do you separate the wheat from the chaff. Is that simply getting your sources and hearing from them, getting evidence from the ground? What does it mean? What do you need?
DOUGLAS LUTE: Charlie, you need what we with call, in the business, all-source intelligence.
And what that comes down to is you can gain intelligence in any number of ways from different sources. So human intelligence, signals intelligence and so forth.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
DOUGLAS LUTE: We are masters at some forms of those intelligence. We`re the best in the world. We lack others like human intelligences, as I think we mentioned earlier. What it takes to can corroborate a report in our region, no matter where it happens, is typically several sources, which corroborate the same information and seem reasonable based on the events as we saw them unfold. So that`s not true in, not only this particular case, but generally across the region. So it`s not unusual at all for us to get a first report that is not right.
CHARLIE ROSE: Can I make a point with respect? It`s one thing to say we know there were these number of al Qaeda members there at that site. We know or don`t -- and say we don`t know how many people were there. We don`t know exactly who might have been killed. We don`t know if al Zawahiri was there. We don`t know if this man Kalibob (ph) -- I`ve forgotten the name specifically -- I`m sure you know -- the engineer, the bomb maker, was there because we needed to collaborate that.
We do know the attack took place. I don`t understand what is wrong with saying we know the attack took place rather than calling it an alleged attack.
DOUGLAS LUTE: Charlie, what I`m responding to is your initial question about the attack, as though we have knowledge of this, that we know what happened, and we were there. We weren`t. We don`t. And, therefore, I am reluctant to make any comments. Because, quite frankly, of past experience, that these things -- that often there are reports that simply don`t play out.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming. It`s a pleasure to have you on the program.
DOUGLAS LUTE: Thank you, Charlie.
